QwertyJobs.com · Research Centre
First edition · Q2 2026
Labour
market barometer
2026
How companies and recruitment agencies see recruitment, employment, productivity, retention and the impact of AI. A report designed as a clear picture of market signals, not a collection of tables.
SURVEY APRIL · MAY · JUNE 2026 - POLAND
55.6% recruitment
is harder
is harder
69.0% of organisations are recruiting now
66.5% have no more than 25% well-matched applications
39.3% of employers plan employment growth
01 / MARKET SNAPSHOT
Key signals
An employers' market in which good matches are still hard to find.
Among the 471 organisations in the study, 59.0% describe the market as favouring employers, yet 55.6% say recruitment has become harder. In this sample the two signals appear together rather than cancelling each other out.
59.0%
Market favours employers
rather or definitely
55.6%
Recruitment is harder
than before
74.5%
Visible market polarisation
many CVs, few good matches
42.0%
Candidate quality declined
slightly or clearly
Interpretation
Many applications, few right answers.
74.5% of respondents recognise a polarised market with many CVs but few good matches, and 66.5% report that no more than a quarter of applications are well matched. At the same time, 42.0% see a decline in candidate quality. "Many applications, but the wrong people" is also the most common description of the staffing situation. Taken together, these signals point to matching, rather than the volume of applications, as the main pressure point in this sample.
Assessment of the labour market
n=471 · single-choice answers
02 / RECRUITMENT
Where the process breaks
Recruitment breaks at the point of fit.
Lack of skills and irrelevant applications are the most frequently cited reasons for recruitment difficulties, and poor matching is the most common complaint about recruitment channels. Technical specialists top the list of the hardest roles to fill. All charts in this section are multiple choice, so percentages add up to more than 100%.
Hardest roles to recruit
Share of responses · multiple choice
Why recruitment is difficult
Share of responses · multiple choice
What does not work in recruitment channels
Share of responses · multiple choice
Which skills are missing
Share of responses · multiple choice
03 / EMPLOYERS
Employment, budgets and retention
Employers are holding steady rather than expanding.
39.3% of employers plan to increase headcount and 22.7% plan to reduce it, while keeping employment unchanged is the most common single answer. 32.8% report a lower recruitment budget. Process organisation is the most often cited barrier to productivity, and pay is the most often cited retention risk.
Employment plans
Employers · n=366
366 employers
no_change 38%
slight_growth 29.8%
slight_reduction 16.9%
significant_growth 9.6%
significant_reduction 5.7%
Change in recruitment budget
Employers · n=366
39.3%
of employers plan employment growth
More employers plan growth than reductions.
At the same time, 37.7% of employers report workforce reductions in the last quarter and 22.7% expect to reduce employment. Growth plans and cuts appear side by side in the same group of companies, so the picture is one of selective hiring rather than broad expansion.
Barriers to productivity
Employers · multiple choice
Biggest retention risks
Employers · multiple choice
04 / ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Technology and productivity
AI is widespread, but mostly still at the testing stage.
83.4% of all respondents use or test AI, with testing the most common stage. 48.2% expect AI to reduce the number of jobs. Among employers, higher productivity is reported more often by organisations using AI in several areas or widely than by those only testing it or not using it at all. This is a co-occurrence, not evidence that AI itself raises productivity, and the group using AI widely is small enough to call for cautious interpretation.
How widely organisations use AI
All respondents · n=471
83.4% use or test AI
testing 38.6%
several_areas 30.1%
not_at_all 16.6%
widely_daily 14.6%
How AI will affect the number of jobs
All respondents · n=471
48.2% expect fewer jobs
decrease 48.2%
no_change 25.1%
hard_to_say 16.6%
increase 10.2%
Where AI helps most
Only organisations using AI · n=393
Higher productivity by level of AI use
Employers · share reporting higher productivity
05 / AGENCIES, RPO, HEADHUNTERS
External perspective
Agencies see clients hesitating before they hire.
Among 103 agencies, RPO providers and headhunters, 71.8% see clients becoming more cautious when hiring, 57.3% see more frequent freezes or delays and 54.4% report lower external recruitment budgets. Budget is the most frequently cited blocker of client decisions, ahead of salary expectations and long decision processes.
Three indicators of pressure on the client side
57.3% see more frequent recruitment freezes or delays
71.8% see greater client caution when hiring
54.4% see lower external recruitment budgets
What blocks client decisions
Agencies / RPO / headhunters · multiple choice
Are clients freezing recruitment?
Agencies / RPO / headhunters
Change in client recruitment budgets
Agencies / RPO / headhunters
06 / BREAKDOWNS
Where the real value of the report begins
Where segments differ, and where they do not.
Among company sizes with sufficient samples, active AI use and perceived recruitment difficulty stay at broadly similar levels, with only modest differences between segments; the largest company-size group is exploratory only. Growth in turnover is reported less often by organisations working mainly in a hybrid model than by onsite ones, while the remote group is too small for more than an exploratory reading. Industry results sit at the technical minimum or just above it and are directional only. All of these are co-occurrences, not causal effects.
Active AI use / testing
By company size · n shown for every segment
Recruitment has become harder
By company size
Growth in employee turnover
By dominant work model
Companies planning employment growth
Only industries with n ≥ 30
The industry ranking includes only segments with n ≥ 30. Results for n=30–49 are directional and should not be presented as a hard ranking of the entire labour market.
07 / RECRUITMENT PRACTICES
Transparency and ghost jobs
Salary ranges are common, but not yet the norm.
The most frequent answer is that salary ranges appear in most job ads, while publishing them in all or almost all ads remains a minority practice. On ghost jobs, the single most common answer is no such experience, yet a substantial share of respondents report at least one encounter.
How often salary ranges are shown
All respondents · n=471
Experience with ghost jobs
All respondents · n=471
08 / METHODOLOGY
How to read the report
A description of the surveyed group, not a claim of representativeness for the whole market.
This section explains the sample size and structure, the study period, the rules used to assess individual segments and the limitations that should be considered when interpreting the results.
471 responses in the study
366 employers
103 agencies / RPO / headhunters
Q2 2026 reference period: April–June 2026
2026-07-16–2026-09-30 data collection period
Publication principle: results describe the organisations participating in the study. The sample should not automatically be treated as representative of all companies operating in Poland.
Segments: n<15 without percentages; 15–29 exploratory; 30–49 technical minimum; 50–99 cautious publication; 100+ standard descriptive comparison.
Multiple-choice questions: percentages may add up to more than 100%.
Staffing situation
For logged-in users only
Is the organisation recruiting?
For logged-in users only
Time to hire
For logged-in users only
Application matching
For logged-in users only
Change in candidate quality
For logged-in users only
Most important recruitment value
For logged-in users only
Recruitment channels
For logged-in users only
CV and skills mismatch
For logged-in users only
Economic impact on decisions
For logged-in users only
Salary change
For logged-in users only
Productivity change
For logged-in users only
Employee turnover change
For logged-in users only
Workforce reductions
For logged-in users only
Work model change
For logged-in users only
09 / STUDY SCALE AND NEXT EDITION
The results in the context of the Polish market
471 responses provide a detailed picture of the surveyed group.
The scale of the study should be assessed together with the number of invited organisations, the response rate and the structure of active enterprises in Poland.
STUDY SCALE
471 responses against the scale of the market.
More than 30,000 organisations were invited to participate in the study. The report includes 471 completed responses, which means that fewer than 1.57% of invited organisations completed the questionnaire.
Compared with the 2,896,481 active enterprises operating in Poland in the second quarter of 2026, the collected responses correspond to approximately 0.0163% of that number.
Scale comparison: the study collected approximately one response for every 6,150 active enterprises in Poland.
MARKET STRUCTURE
The Polish market is dominated by microenterprises.
According to Statistics Poland, there were 2,896,481 active enterprises in Poland in the second quarter of 2026. Of these, 2,779,281 were microenterprises employing up to nine people.
Microenterprises accounted for 96% of all active enterprises. The survey also included larger employers, recruitment agencies, temporary employment agencies, RPO teams and headhunters. Its structure therefore differs from the structure of the entire population of active enterprises.
Interpretation: the results describe the organisations participating in the study. They should not be extrapolated to all enterprises operating in Poland.
STATISTICAL MEANING OF THE SAMPLE
What does a sample of 471 responses mean?
A sample of 471 responses provides a solid basis for describing the surveyed group and presenting its overall results. In the standard statistical benchmark used for randomly selected samples, this sample size corresponds to a maximum margin of error of approximately ±4.5 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.
For example, a result of 50% in a random and representative sample of this size would correspond to an approximate range from 45.5% to 54.5%. Results calculated for smaller segments are less precise: approximately ±9.8 percentage points for n=100, ±13.9 points for n=50 and ±17.9 points for n=30.
The ±4.5 percentage-point value is presented only as a statistical reference point. It is not the formal margin of error of this study. Participation was voluntary, respondents were not selected through probability sampling and the results were not weighted to reproduce the structure of all active enterprises in Poland.
The 471 responses therefore provide a reliable description of the participating organisations and allow broad comparisons between sufficiently large segments. They do not provide a basis for directly extrapolating every result to all enterprises operating in Poland.
How to read segment results: results based on several hundred responses can be treated as the strongest descriptive findings in the report. Results for segments with approximately 100 responses should be interpreted with caution, while results for segments below 50 responses should be treated primarily as exploratory signals.
Market data source: Statistics Poland, Active enterprises in the second quarter of 2026, published on 10 September 2026.
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